Finger Painting

I love my iPhone for many reasons, but one of them is the application "Brushes" which is like a miniature version of Corel Painter. I was fiddling around with it tonight and did this painting of Hellboy. I'm going to try to do more with this app - it's quite difficult to paint with your finger, it's not terribly precise but I think it will be an interesting exercise in trying to paint in broad strokes.

Busy Bee

A quick doodle of my studiomate Karl Kerschl, as seen from my desk:

The Man From SNIKT

Here's a page from my upcoming Wolverine short, "The Man From SNIKT," which is appearing in X-Men First Class Special #1, The lovely colours are by Christina Strain!




Uncanny X-Men: First Class Giant-Size Special #1 is on sale June 3! Buy buy buy!

Action!

Looking over the posts from the last few weeks I realize this is in danger of becoming a blog about people standing still. Here's a few action pages from the next issue of Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye, on sale May 6!

Building A Cover - Wolverine: First Class #17

Regular readers of my blog might remember that a little while ago I mentioned that I had a bit of an itch to draw Wolverine. Almost immediately I found emails in my inbox, some from established professional writers, some from aspiring amateurs, and one from an editor at Marvel, who offered me a couple of Wolverine-related jobs, which I of course gladly accepted.

The first was to draw the cover for issue 17 of Wolverine: First Class. I was given a fairly open cover concept by my editor - it was to feature Wolverine as "Patch," his suave, James Bond-ish alias, and Kitty Pryde, accompanying him on a spy mission. I was instructed to draw Kitty attempting to look "bad-ass."

This was the first sketch I submitted, placing Patch and Kitty in Monaco, or similar exotic locale:



Most illustrators will tell you that you should never go with your first concept. My editor rejected this sketch immediately, citing a few major problems - Wolverine wasn't placed prominently enough in the composition, Kitty looked too confident and cool, and he also felt that she also was a little too sexy (Kitty is only 13 in this series - eep!).

So I revised it, this time placing them on a Moroccan-style balcony, and adding an eyepatch to Kitty to indicate that she is trying to unconvincingly emulate Wolverine:



My editor liked this one but still had a few notes - he thought Kitty's pigeon-toed stance was too awkward, and she needed to look slightly more confident, but Wolverine's body language should suggest that he finds her bravado amusing. A few more tweaks:



Success! This sketch was approved and I was given the go-ahead to proceed to final. I did a tighter, more detailed drawing over the rough, in Photoshop using my Wacom Cintiq tablet. The latticework in the background and the tile pattern on the floor were quickly made in Illustrator and dropped into the sketch:



And then I printed this off in light blue on artboard and did the final inked drawing. I inked the lattice and tile by hand (tedious!), using the Illustrator patterns as a guide:



Once the inks were complete I added colour. This is not usually my strongest suit and so I consulted some friends and ended up with a nighttime palette, based on suggestions from my friends Brian McLachlan and J. Bone:



All that was left to do was send it to Marvel!

Wolverine: First Class #17 is out in July.

The Horror

The 6th in my Umbrella Academy series. It was a brutal work day today but I still managed to fire this one out before I go home. I'm going to be away from the studio for most of the week so Spaceboy will unfortunately have to wait until I get back!

The Boy and Pogo

The 5th in my series of Umbrella Academy drawings...

The Séance

Another in the series of Umbrella Academy drawings. I'm starting to get requests now - don't worry, I'll do them all...

Brainpicking

Hey there - the Mindless Ones, one of the best comics blogs on the net, recently stalked me, captured me, and forced me to answer a bunch of questions for them. Read the whole sordid story here.

The White Violin

Another Umbrella Academy drawing - these are fun! I'm not as happy with this one though, the others were done late at night after a full day's work, when my brain is a flurry of activity and I am full of creative energy - this one is the first drawing of the day today, to get the engine started, and so it's not as loose or as vibrant as I'd like. Also - don't try to draw a violin from memory. Lesson learned.

The Rumor

Another Umbrella Academy drawing, for fun. I'll likely end up doing the whole team...

The Kraken

I have to admit that I was pretty cynical about The Umbrella Academy when it was first announced - a superhero comic written by a rock star (Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance)? Pssssh. There have been a few celebrities to try their hand at "writing" comics and the results are usually pretty lame, low-grade attempts to exploit comics' current fashionability as movie pitch packages.

I originally picked up The Umbrella Academy on the strength of the artist, the amazing Gabriel Ba, and was pretty surprised to discover that I actually really enjoyed reading it - maybe it's Way's pre-rockstar background as an intern at DC Comics, but rather than an awkward vanity project I thought the book was well-written and engagingly off-beat, in the vein of Grant Morrison's early work on Doom Patrol (one of my favourite comics as a kid). I haven't yet read the current miniseries, "Dallas," but I look forward to picking it up once it's collected.

Anyway all this to say I was sketching last night for fun and I did this drawing of The Kraken.

Batman and Robin

Here's some late-night sketches of Batman and Robin, inspired by Frank Quitely's work on the upcoming series by him and Grant Morrison.

It's Always Tease, Tease, Tease

Here's part of a page of the Wolverine story I'm working on for X-Men Special Class Special #1, out in June.

At Long Last

Today's the day! Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye #1 is released in shops in North America, and tomorrow in the UK and elsewhere. 5 long years of wondering if the story would ever be finished are over. The three issues of Vol 2 will be coming out monthly, then I'm going on a bit of a break to work on The Apocalipstix Vol 2, and then it'll be back to Seaguy Eternal, which should be out sometime in 2010.

Please check it out and report back here with your reactions! Thanks!